HEXTRAN–SMABRE calculation of the VVER-1000 coolant transient-1 benchmark

Abstract

The VVER-1000 coolant transient benchmark is intended for validation of couplings of the thermal hydraulic codes and three-dimensional neutron kinetic core models. It concerns switching on a main coolant pump when the other three main coolant pumps are in operation. The problem is based on an experiment performed in Kozloduy NPP in Bulgaria. In addition to the real plant transient, an extreme scenario concerning a control rod ejection after switching on a main coolant pump was calculated. At VTT the three-dimensional advanced nodal code HEXTRAN is used for the core dynamics, and the system code SMABRE as a thermal hydraulic model for the primary and secondary loop. The parallelly coupled HEXTRAN–SMABRE code has been in production use since early 1990s, and it has been extensively used for analyses of VVER NPPs. The SMABRE input model is based on the standard VVER-1000 input used at VTT. The whole core calculation is performed with HEXTRAN. Also the core model is based on earlier VVER-1000 models. Nuclear data for the calculation were specified in the benchmark. The paper outlines the input models used for both codes. Calculated results are introduced both for the coupled core system with inlet and outlet boundary conditions and for the whole plant model. Parametric studies have been performed for selected parameters.